Author: David Weightman
At this time last year, rising sophomores worried about getting low room draw numbers, finishing themed housing applications and ending up in the same dorms as their friends. By contrast, this year’s rising juniors face entirely new obstacles, as their anxiety over room draw numbers has become anxiety over the application to live off-campus. Students with a range of GPAs, disciplinary records, and on-campus activities have submitted applications or plan to, yet they remain in a mixed state of confusion and hope. Because rising juniors have no guarantee that they’ll be accepted to live off-campus, making critical decisions about living situations has become exceedingly difficult.
A student applying to live off-campus needs three or four different contingency plans to account for a number of possible outcomes. After receiving notice whether or not they’ve been accepted, applicants have less than two weeks to make their final decisions, throwing the process of picking roomates into disarray. Though Residential Education (ResEd) expects students to have looked for off-campus housing already, they fail to see the near catch-22 involved in planning around who gets accepted or rejected. As a result, students don’t have adequate time to figure out logistics around where and with whom they will live.
With only a week to figure out who can live off-campus and scrap together with other students to find the houses vacated by graduating seniors, it’s a challenge to find a house that is close to campus, has enough space for everyone, and perhaps most importantly, that doesn’t cost too much.
The unpredictability extends from finding roommates to determining whether or not living off-campus is a financially feasible option. For accepted students, the short window of time during which they must decide to live off-campus hurries a critical financial moment – can they find a place with cheaper rent than the room and board costs of living at Occidental?
Students receiving financial aid or scholarships need all the time they can get to figure out how their plans will be affected by living off-campus. Finding the right house takes weeks of advance planning that, under the current scheme, is made more difficult by the uncertainty of acceptance.
Many students question the validity of restricting 20- and 21-year-old students, who are essentially functioning adults, from living off-campus. As post-graduate life gets closer and closer, students want to be better prepared for the real world, and two years of living off-campus makes a real difference. ResEd continuously cites the uniqueness of the dorm experience to defend their housing policies, without acknowledging the burdens, financial and otherwise, that it places on students.
If, at the end of the day, students are unable to find a suitable off-campus residence, ResEd offers the possibility of returning to campus, though without the guarantee of a decent room or being housed alongside their friends.
This isn’t suitable. By surrounding the possibility of off-campus living with bureaucratic red tape and uncertain outcomes, the school’s policies put juniors in the lurch.
The complexity of navigating ResEd’s policies does not acknowledge the challenges and the time required for making complex decisions involving one’s personal living space, roommates and finances.
David Weightman is a sophomore ECLS major. He can be reached at weightman@oxy.edu.
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